Sydney Hilton Hotel bombing


The Sydney Hilton Hotel bombing occurred on 13 February 1978, when a bomb exploded outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. At the time the hotel was the site of the first Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting, a regional offshoot of the biennial meetings of the heads of government from across the Commonwealth of Nations.
The bomb was planted in a rubbish bin and exploded when the bin was emptied into a garbage truck outside the hotel at 12:40 a.m. It killed two garbage collectors, Alec Carter and William Favell. A police officer guarding the entrance to the hotel lounge, Paul Burmistriw, died later. It also injured eleven others. Twelve foreign leaders were staying in the hotel at the time, but none were injured. Australian prime minister Malcolm Fraser immediately called out the Australian Army for the remainder of the CHOGRM meeting.
The Hilton case has been highly controversial due to allegations that Australian security forces, such as the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, may have been responsible. This led to the New South Wales parliament unanimously calling for the Commonwealth to hold an inquiry in 1991 and 1995. The federal government refused to hold an inquiry.

Ananda Marga

In June 1978, members of the Ananda Marga organisation were implicated by a police informant, Richard John Seary. No charges were laid regarding the Hilton bombing; however, three members of Ananda Marga — Tim Anderson, Paul Alister and Ross Dunn — were convicted of conspiracy to murder Robert Cameron, an ultra-right activist, four months after the Hilton attack. Following an inquiry by Justice James Wood in 1984, which found Seary’s evidence to be unreliable, the three men were pardoned and released.
On 30 May 1989, Anderson was charged with the murder of Favell, Carter and Burmistriw based on evidence gained from a jailed bank-robber and serial escapee, Ray Denning. The following day Pederick surrendered himself to police in Brisbane and further implicated Anderson. Pederick alleged he had unsuccessfully attempted to detonate the bomb on the afternoon of Sunday 12 February 1978 as Desai arrived at the Hilton.
In 1989, Evan Pederick confessed to planting the bomb, and was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in jail. At the time of the bombing, Pederick was a member of the Ananda Marga organisation. He alleged the attack was an attempt to assassinate the then prime minister of India, Morarji Desai, who was attending CHOGRM and staying at the Hilton.
Following Pederick’s conviction in 1989, Anderson was tried in the Supreme Court of NSW in 1990. Because Pederick’s admissions to police did not match the recorded movements outside the Hilton on 12 February 1978, the prosecution in the Anderson trial suggested Pederick had mistaken Desai’s arrival for the arrival of the then president of Sri Lanka, Junius Jayawardene. However, when evidence presented at the trial discredited this idea, the prosecution shifted ground and suggested Pederick had been looking at Desai leaving the hotel later on the Sunday afternoon. Anderson was convicted of three counts of murder on 25 October 1990.
In 1991 Anderson was acquitted on appeal. Announcing the verdict, Chief Justice Murray Gleeson found: “The trial of the appellant miscarried principally because of an error which resulted in large part from the failure of the prosecuting authorities adequately to check aspects of the Jayawardene theory.”
Following Anderson’s acquittal, Pederick sought an inquiry into his own conviction. It was rejected by the NSW Government in favour of an appeal, which was unsuccessful. Pederick was released from jail in November 1997 and returned to Western Australia. He is now an Anglican minister in Perth and continues to accept full responsibility for his role in the Hilton bombing.

Accusations of conspiracy

Some studies of the bombing asserted that there were a number of unusual circumstances, namely:
Many of these issues were identified by Terry Griffiths, a former policeman who was seriously injured in the bombing, who has called for an inquiry. Barry Hall QC, counsel for Griffiths, argued that ASIO may well have planted the bomb in order to justify their existence.
The 1982 Walsh inquest had been terminated prematurely due to the finding of a prima facie case of murder. The Indian prime minister Morarji Desai claimed that Ananda Marga had attempted to kill him due to the imprisonment of the organisation's spiritual leader, Shrii Shrii Anandamurti. ASIO had infiltrated the Ananda Marga from 1976 and were monitoring it.

Further studies of the case

In 1998, Ben Hills wrote an article called The Hilton Fiasco, published in the Sydney Morning Herald. He asserted that members of Ananda Marga were responsible for the Hilton bombing, saying that Evan Pederick was recruited for the bombing by Tim Anderson, while a man called Abhiik Kumar was the likely mastermind. He also asserted that ASIO had information which would have helped in the police investigation, but withheld it.
In Who Bombed the Hilton?, Rachel Landers addressed the accusation that the bins outside the Hilton were left unemptied, with a bomb secreted inside one of them, as part of a conspiracy by Australian police or security agencies. Landers asserts: "An enormous number of people are free to shove any number of objects into the bin, lean on it or use it as a convenient seat over a very long period of time. For the conspiracists to be correct, the following have to be lying in their statements: seven garbagemen, an accountant, two hippies, a sign-writer, a father of two out for the day with his kids, an anarchist and the Hilton commissionaire. They also have to be colluding with each other, the police who have been told to wave away garbage trucks and, one assumes, ASIO and their mates at Special Branch." However, Landers does not address the evidence of the driver of the truck, Bill Ebb, that the bins were unemptied as discussed above.
Landers also draws attention to the activities of Abhiik Kumar. She maintains that Kumar had been in almost every country where there was a threat, an attack or cases of Margis being arrested for violence against an Indian national. This included Kumar being in Sydney the day before the Hilton bombing.
In The Hilton Bombing: Evan Pederick and the Ananda Marga, Imre Salusinszky asserted that “not a single shred of evidence has emerged to support any of the conspiracy theories about the Hilton bombing." He then says "the official cover-up, if indeed there is one, has remained tight as a drum". He does not address some claims such as those of the dog handler Keith Burley. Salusinszky writes that following the dismissal of Pederick’s appeal in 1997 “nobody could seriously suggest that ASIO, Special Branch, the Indian secret police or, indeed, anybody other than Evan Pederick had left a bomb outside the Hilton.” As mentioned above, members of the NSW parliament on two occasions unanimously passed a motion calling for a federal inquiry into the bombing with some suggesting there were questions that remained unanswered.
Salusinszky gives a detailed account of Pederick's involvement in AM activities. This included planting the bomb outside the Hilton and then going to Brisbane on the same day. He also covers in detail Pederick's decision to confess to a Catholic priest after eleven years of guilt and torment.

Trials and inquiries

A few days after the bombing, Richard Seary offered his services to the police Special Branch as an informant. He expressed the view that the Ananda Marga society might be involved with the Hilton bombing; he soon infiltrated that organization, which had its headquarters in three adjacent houses in Queen Street, Newtown.
On 15 June, Seary told Special Branch that members of Ananda Marga intended to bomb the home of Robert Cameron, a member of the far-right National Front of Australia, that night at his home in the Sydney suburb of Yagoona. Two members of the society — Ross Dunn and Paul Alister — were subsequently apprehended at Yagoona in Seary's company and charged with conspiracy to murder Robert Cameron.
It was alleged that Dunn and Alister had intended to plant a bomb at Cameron's home. Dunn and Alister stated that they intended only to write graffiti at Cameron's home and had no knowledge of the bomb, which they claimed had been brought by Seary. Seary was considered by some to be an unreliable witness, having already given discredited evidence accusing Dunn and Alister at the initial Hilton bombing inquest, being a drug addict and a "mentally disturbed fantasizer".
However, there was also some police evidence, and the prosecution had strongly associated the matter with the Sydney Hilton bombing. The trial relating to the alleged plot to bomb Cameron's home began in February 1979, but the jury could not come to a verdict. A second trial was held in July and all three defendants were convicted.
A coronial inquest into the bombing itself was eventually held in 1982. Stipendiary Magistrate Walsh found a prima facie case of murder against two members of Ananda Marga – Ross Dunn and Paul Alister – based on evidence from Richard Seary which was later discredited.
Coronial inquiries are limited in their scope. No person appearing before the coroner has a right to subpoena evidence without permission from the coroner, and in this inquest Walsh rejected all applications.
In 1984, the Attorney-General, Paul Landa, established an inquiry to investigate the convictions of Dunn, Alister and Anderson. The inquiry was similar to a Royal Commission, and was headed by Justice Wood. Richard Seary was in England at the time and did not take part, but after the inquiry he indicated that he was willing to take part. Justice Wood reconvened the inquiry and it ran through to February 1985. The result was that Justice Wood recommended the pardoning of the three, and they were released in 1985. The pardoned trio received compensation from the NSW Government. Alister ploughed his compensation money into land on Bridge Creek Road near Maleny, Queensland, which would become his home, and also the site of the Ananda Marga River School.
According to Paul Alister's later account, points that emerged during the inquiry included:
In 1989, a former member of Ananda Marga, Evan Pederick, claimed that he had planted the bomb at the Hilton Hotel on orders from Tim Anderson. Anderson was then re-arrested for the Sydney Hilton bombing, tried, convicted and sentenced to fourteen years. The crown prosecutor was Mark Tedeschi QC. However Anderson was acquitted in 1991 by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal, which held that the verdicts of guilty were unsafe and unsatisfactory. Chief Justice Gleeson concluded:
Instead of ordering a new trial, the Court entered a judgement of acquittal.
Pederick had confessed to the bombing and so was convicted without detailed scrutiny of his confession. However, in the Anderson appeal, Chief Justice Gleeson said Pederick's account of the bombing was "clearly unreliable". Pederick's later appeal was rejected when he produced no evidence to explain why his original confession had been false. Pederick was released after serving eight years in jail and stated: "I guess I was quite unique in the prison system in that I had to keep proving my guilt, whereas everyone else said they were innocent."
Paul Alister later speculated about Richard Seary's motives, saying he was a "wild card" because he seemed to have his own agenda. He stated that Seary seemed to have a mixture of motives for what he said, and seemed to dislike the police. Seary's girlfriend indicated that Seary had been pressured by the police to find evidence that incriminated the "Margiis". Alister and his colleagues speculated that perhaps Seary was being blackmailed into informing because of his former activity as a drug addict. Seary had also been present when someone had died of a drug overdose; this may have given the police leverage over him because he could be charged.
The two failed prosecutions against Tim Anderson and his friends have been cited examples of Australian miscarriages of justice, for example in Kerry Carrington's 1991 book Travesty! Miscarriages of Justice and in other law texts including notes on compensation practice.

Political effects and significance

Before the inquiries it was described in Parliament as the first and only domestic terrorist event in Australia.
Prior to the bombing the security forces had been under considerable pressure. In South Australia, the White inquiry into their police special branch was very critical, and ties with ASIO were cut. New South Wales was about to have a similar inquiry. After the bombing, the NSW inquiry was never held, and the Commonwealth increased support for the anti-terrorism activities of the intelligence services.

30th anniversary commemoration ceremony

A plaque was unveiled at the site of the explosion in George Street on 13 February 2008, the 30th anniversary of the blast.
The then New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma commended Sydney City Council for restoring the memorial plaque to its original home, and said he hoped there will never be a need for another.

Profile of Richard Seary

Richard Seary was born in Sydney in 1952. His father John was a successful racer of motor bikes, but he abandoned the family in 1956. The children's mother also left not long after. Seary and his siblings were farmed out to various institutions, mostly in Queensland in Seary's case, because his father was living there. He had short-lived stays with his father, but was tormented by a stepmother he described as a psychopath. He absconded from a Brisbane institution in 1968 and went to Sydney.
Seary subsequently became a drug addict and was convicted for heroin possession in 1971, but succeeded in breaking the habit. He was then involved with the Hare Krishna group from 1972–74. In 1974, through the Hare Krishnas, he met an English woman named Sally, who had a child from a previous relationship. They went to England, where Sally gave birth to a baby girl. However, Seary and Sally split up at an early stage and Seary returned to Australia in 1976.
By early 1977, Seary was doing volunteer work as a Crisis Centre counsellor at the Wayside Chapel in Potts Point. He went to England after the trial of the Ananda Marga members, but came back to Sydney in 1985 for the inquiry headed by Justice Wood.
By 1992 he was doing welfare work at a church in Sydney. In late 1992, he fled to Queensland after an attempt was made on his life. In 2012 he published a book, Smoke'n'Mirrors: How the Australian People Were Screwed. In the introduction, he described himself as a spy and secret agent. He also stated that he was dying, without going into details. He died in 2014.